In today’s edition of Ask Inskstain, reader Scot wonders: Have we got updated U.S. gasoline figures to see if the $4.00/gallon dropoff, uh…thingie, continues to have legs? Great question, Scot! Gasoline consumption in the United States continues to lag. As for the other gas thingie, the post-July decline in gas prices is finally over:
Kelsey Atherton pokes at the newspaper elephant from the vantage point of the comics page: Then, in 2007, webcomic Diesel Sweeties actually made the jump. The creator opted to create a separate print version, so as to keep his main comic and main revenue stream separate from the confines of print. Read that sentence again. …
Continue reading ‘Elephant Diaries: Checking in on the Comics’ »
Via Michael Campana, a remarkable graph:
On my way home from a bike ride just now, I heard the ice cream truck, one of those indicators of our human phenology. Seems awfully early. Global warming? One more sign of our imminent economic collapse?
It’s not just us: Japan, the world’s third-largest oil user, said gasoline sales in the country fell the most in more than half a century as record prices prompted motorists to drive less. Sales fell 4.2 percent in 2008 to 57.3 million kiloliters (15.1 billion gallons), the biggest drop since the trade ministry started collecting …
David Zetland, the bad boy of water economics, offered up a fascinating argument the other day regarding the traditional argument that agriculture used three quarters of the water in the West. When a farmer irrigates her field, who is it who’s really the “user”? When I use water to flush the toilet, that water only …
I would like to thank Nora for bringing this to my attention.
I’ve been working for the paper on a piece about Aldo Leopold’s years in Albuquerque. It’s a setup for a conference next month, and an excuse to explore some of the issues Leopold’s legacy raises for use living in the desert Southwest today. Here’s a snapshot, from a walk around the University of New Mexico …
Continue reading ‘Stuff I Wrote Elsewhere, Aldo Leopold Edition’ »
From Democracy for New Mexico: My partner of 19+ years and I are aging. We’re dealing with a number of health problems. We’re aware that if Mary Ellen loses her job, my health insurance will end that day, because the vast majority of employers in New Mexico can’t, by law, offer insurance coverage to domestic …
If OPEC priced its oil based on how much it costs to get it out of the ground, we’d be swimming in it right now. Or, more precisely, we would have been swimming in it, until we used it all up. The peak would have come long ago. When the market prices oil, the cost …